The economic value of trees has long been recognized by society. In countries such as Brazil, Madagascar, and Malaysia, forest resources constitute a significant part of their economy. Unfortunately, the wholesale cutting of trees and resultant deforestation have been linked to environmental problems.
Trees have ecological value as well. Deforestation on a local level results in flooding and erosion. The absence of trees to absorb flood waters in the Philippines, for example, has been blamed for millions of dollars worth of property damage and hundreds of lives. On a more global level, problems such as global warming and the greenhouse effect may potentially result from deforestation around the world.
In response to the aforementioned problems, governments around the world are now enacting policies to conserve forests. Unfortunately, policies to conserve forests are expensive and difficult to implement. Programs such as reserve area tree protection and logging bans have proven to be unsuccessful at halting tree cutting. Countries such as Brazil are expected to spend millions of dollars to launch remote sensing satellites to monitor their rain forests. Other present methods of implementing forest conservation policies tend to demand a large amount of manpower and are expensive.
Accordingly, a need has developed for a device for signaling the felling of a tree and a system for forest conservation which are inexpensive, require minimum manpower, and which are effective in accomplishing their purpose.